Re: [Asrg] Adding a spam button to MUAs

Daniel Feenberg <feenberg@nber.org> Wed, 09 December 2009 21:37 UTC

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Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:26:00 -0500
From: Daniel Feenberg <feenberg@nber.org>
To: Anti-Spam Research Group - IRTF <asrg@irtf.org>
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Subject: Re: [Asrg] Adding a spam button to MUAs
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On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, John Levine wrote:

>> Feedback is going to be controversial in this group.
>
> I don't see why.
>
>> The first thing I would like to see was for email clients to automatically
>> include headers for all mail forwarded to "postmaster" or "abuse".
>
> Let's assume that any reports sent by SMTP are in ARF format which (when
> implemented correctly) includes the entire message at issue.

I was not talking about automatically generated reports, but simply 
forwarding of messages by users to postmaster, which includes complaints 
about spam, DSNs and other items that users need help with. Often help can 
be provided only if the headers are available, and they are never 
included. I then write back to the user asking for headers, and they 
either drop the matter, or resend the message, again without the headers. 
It is a pointless exercise all around, and one easily fixed by the MUA 
vendors. I don't think users who can't send headers are going to master 
the art of creating ARF format complaints. In any case, I am not the 
source of the abuse, merely someone who would like to help out.

Daniel Feenberg

>
> R's,
> John
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